UKC

Following all the grumpiness about the 'top fifty books everyone should read' and whether such a title is justified, I fling down a gauntlet to the good (or thereabouts) people of UKC. You can come up with a top fifty if you like, but to make it easier just come up with the top ten books you think everyone should read. If you can provide reasons, so much the better.

No limit on genre.

Over to you...

In reply to Tall Clare:

I'm not sure that everyone should read these but they are some of the best I've read.

Off the top of my head and in no particular order:

Melville - Moby Dick
P.G. Wodehouse - any Jeeves and Wooster collection
Wendell Berry - A Place on Earth
Stephen Jay Gould - The Richness of Life
Erwin Schrodinger - What is Life?
Primo Levi - If this is a Man / The Truce
Jorge Luis Borges - Labyrinths
Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness
Albert Camus - L'etranger
Italo Calvino - Six Memos for the Next Millenium.

If I find the time I'll try to provide reasons.

In reply to Tall Clare:

Thousand Splendid Suns
Kite Runner
Captain Corelli's Mandolin
Catch 22
Doomsday Book
Engleby
Crime and Punishment
Great Expectations
Sleepyhead
Atonement

In reply to Tall Clare:

The Communist manifesto, the first half at least. - Brilliant analysis and everyone should understand what Marx was originally on about.

Nausea - to help with the "why we're here" question

Steppenwolf - for the "what's the point of it all" question and just for the beauty of the language.

How The Mind Works - for the "how am I thinking about this" question

Nineteen Eighty Four - for an insight into what could be if we're not careful.

The Alan Clark diaries - or any other political diary to understand something of the mechanics of politics.

North - Nansen's account of his epic polar journey. An inspiring account of what you can do if you really get you shit together.

Sustainable Energy - Without the hot air - David MacKay's book on the the most important issue facing mankind, ever.


..

Stuff like that..

In reply to Tall Clare:

If This is a Man/The Truce - Primo Levi
Kidnapped - Robert Louis Stevenson
Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco
The Secret History - Donna Tartt
Germinal - Emile Zola
Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino
The Master of Ballantrae - Robert Louis Stevenson
The Go Between - LP Hartley
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
Perdido St. Station - China Meiville

Depends on the criteria but this is a list of books I have read at least a couple of times each so I suppose they're the ones I've enjoyed most.

In reply to Mooncat: I'm reading (and greatly enjoying) The Secret History now on Clare's recommendation.

In reply to Submit to Gravity:

It's a great book, hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

In reply to Tall Clare:

The Master and Margarita - Bulgakov
Lolita - Nabokov
Tender is the Night - Fitzgerald
Ulysses - Joyce
To the Lighthouse - Woolf
The Sound and the Fury - Faulkner
Le Grand Meaulnes - Fournier
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Marquez
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Kundera
The Trial - Kafka

In reply to DaveHK:

The band Moby was so named because one of their grandfathers was Herman Melville who wrote Moby Dick.

In reply to psaunders:

wow. thats almost my list.

id swap in brave new world, soul mountain, bridge on the drina and for whom the bell tolls for #s 1, 3, 6, 7.

In reply to psaunders:


Idontgettit. I finally read this not that long ago and it was good, but top ten that everyone should read? How so?

In reply to Tall Clare:

The Tin Drum, Gunter Grass, has to be on any list.
The Rings of Saturn, Sebald, or Austerlitz, Sebald, likewise.

In reply to DaveHK:

My justifications:

Moby Dick - Repays patience with some superb writing. It's not about the whale...
Jeeves and Wooster - Playful writing at its best
Berry - A Place on Earth - A way of life immortalised in light, bright, lucid prose and some of the most endearing characters in American fiction
Stephen Jay Gould - The Richness of Life - Collected wisdom on a wide range of issues
Erwin Schrodinger - What is Life? Dazzlingly insightful.
Primo Levi - If this is a Man / The Truce - Needs no justification. Did anyone else find themselves enjoying this then feel guilty for doing so?
Jorge Luis Borges - Labyrinths - Turns the world on its head and convinces you it's always been that way, you just didn't realise.
Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness - Tighter than a gnats chuff. Every line carries the story forward.
Italo Calvino - Six Memos for the Next Millenium. - Calvino's instructions for how to write the great novels of the 21st century. Should be simple then...

I'm going to swap out L'etranger for Perec's 'Life a Users Manual' not because it's any better but because I enjoyed it more.

In reply to Tall Clare:

Just a couple:

On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwan.
Timoleon Vieta Come Home - Dan Rhodes

Everyone should read these, to bring them back to reality if they start believing in the fantasy world of trite romance. And if you already have a completed jaundiced view of life then they'll make you feel less alone.

In reply to Tall Clare: wot no À La Recherche...? No Anna Karenina, bible, Koran, Bhagavad Gita, Capital, Mein Kampf, The State And Revolution, Also Spracht Z, no great sweeping history of Britain? If "the Great American Novel" exists as yet surely it's The Grapes of Wrath. Nice to see Germinale, The Master And Margarita, Steppenwolf, 1948, Ulysses and If This Is A Man in there. Probably something by Dawkins - The Selfish Gene? Sartre I'd substitute Iron In The Soul and Camus The Rebel. Ten's just impossible

In reply to Bobling: I think Lolita is an absolutely astonishing work.

Note, there is a spoiler below...

It succeeds primarily as a sort of detective story, with many clues left throughout the novel which ultimately lead to the revelation of Quilty as being the pursuer. These are mostly so subtle that on first reading they blend into the scenery but all come together in the final realisation.

The writing itself is so carefully crafted and contains so many literary, classical and historical references that it becomes a sort of decadent celebration of prose. There is detail everywhere to be teased out.

In reply to Tall Clare:

Some very good suggestions, to which I'd like to add :

To Kill A Mockingbird - essential reading in a World where racism is far from dead.

Cider With Rosie - a reminder of lost, rural Britain.

In reply to janiejonesworld:

The good thing about doing it this way is that everyone gets their own top ten

In reply to Tall Clare:

1+2 The Trial & The Castle by Kafka. (His search for reason was in his real life his search for his father, but still fascinating.)
3 Dance of the Dwarfs (SIC) by Geoffrey Household - Gripping & imaginative.
4 My Life and Loves by Frank Harris - entertaining gossip by an Irish editor of the London Times newspaper.
5 The Steel Bonnets by George MacDonald Fraser - Shows how the English/Scottish border folk (Reivers) were/are the hardest people in the world.
6 Appaloosa by Robert B. Parker - Good story, good on atmosphere, better than the film.
7 The Damned United by David Peace - Football, but hard to put down if you know the characters involved.
8 There is another novel called The Gentle Ones which has been mentioned on this site before by me and another but I can't find reference to it anywhere. It was about terrible people in WW2. Should be read, but is disturbing. Perhaps one of our Jewish readers could find it.
I could recommend others but many of my books are not easy to find now.

In reply to DaveHK:


No, but the last line was utterly chilling. Where he dreams that his return home to his family was a dream in Auschwitz and he and all the other prisoners are awaiting the dawn command of Auschwitz :

"Now this inner dream, this dream of peace, is over and in the outer dream, gelid, a well-known voice responds with a single word, not imperious, but brief and subdued as one who is certain to be obeyed. It is the dawn command of Auschwitz, a foreign word , feared and expected : get up, "Wstawach".

Which itself recalls that other chronicler of 20th century hell, Solzhenitsyn, and his first, most crisp and taught account of the Gulag, "One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich" : "It had not been a bad day, one of 8647 other days to go".


The finest novella ever written. Not totally relevant, but the starting point for both TS Eliots "The Wasteland" and also, bizarrely, Apocalypse now.


Agree to scrapping out L'etranger, but surely replace it from the same author, with La Peste (the Plague).

I see no-one has mentioned The Queen of Spades - the finest short story ever written.

In reply to mockerkin:

Sorry for the pedantry but Moby is a person not a band.

In reply to Tall Clare:

Need to read more books but some of my personal favourites so far this year are:


Aldous Huxley- Brave New World (Pretty deep with lots of food for thought)

Cynthia Ozick- Heir to the Glimmering World (Great characters/ brilliantly written)

Richard Brautigan- Sombrero Fallout (Bizarre but hilarious and only 150 pages)

In reply to Tall Clare: Warren Ellis - Crooked Little Vein. If a PI agreeing to bollock swelling saline injections in order to gain info about his case sounds good then you might like this. Not exactly comedy but made me laugh out loud more than any other book I've read.

In reply to Tall Clare:
Moby dick, brilliantly written and much more than a story about hunting a whale
Gulliver's Travels, brilliantly written and much more than a story of a giant in Lilliput
Stranger in a strange land, one of the best books I have read so far, very similar to the idiot
The electric cool aid acid test, Deleted what I wanted to say, but read it if you like Beat.
On the road, ties in nicely with the book above
The idiot. One of the best writers I know of, a twist on the Jesus story, and very similar to stranger.
Deep play, the best and I will fight over this , climbing based story of all time,
The house on pooh corner, read this as an adult and laugh and cry with your loved ones. Or alone.
A scanner darkly, a journey into paranoia, funny still.
Great expectations, All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretenses did I cheat myself.

That's my list, maybe I should read more, but lines from each of these books still pop up in my life, years after i have read them and make me think I am glad I read them,

I

In reply to janiejonesworld:

I'm not sure Mein Kampf HAS to be read. One should be aware of it and the vile sentiment it carries but it's a bit much to actually read the whole thing.

In reply to psaunders: Ulysses? Really? I think life is far too short!

In reply to Tall Clare:
Great thread, these are the first 10 that sprang to mind for me - not my favourite books as such, but the ones that everyone should read

In no particular order

1 To Kill a Mockingbird
2 Lord of the Flies
3 Catch 22
4 Birdsong
5 1984
6 The Bridge
7 Atonement
8 The Handmaid's Tale
9 The Crucible (yes it's play, but still)
10 Espedair Street
11 Money

In reply to Chris the Tall:

Including plays is fine - as is including non-fiction. It's your list!

In reply to Tall Clare:


At least two words in the thread's title I don't understand: "should" and "everyone".

In reply to Tall Clare:

1984
Swallows and Amazons
Jane Eyre
Animal Farm
Lord of the Flies

My top 5 - cant think of 10 stand out must reads right now!

In reply to Tim Chappell:

It's just a lighthearted thing referencing the 'fifty books you should read' thread. I'm not really the bludgeoning type.

Which ten books do you think are sufficiently wonderful that you'd like to share their joys with the world?

In reply to aln:

And it is supposed to be his great, great, great granduncle.

In reply to Tall Clare:

OK, so "should" just means "should because you'll enjoy them". I still doubt I can name any books at all that I'm sure everyone on UKC will enjoy. And I still wonder about the variety of different things that "enjoy" can mean, but don't get me started on that. So here are ten just for you (if you haven't already read them):

Eric Newby, Love and War in the Apennines
Eric Newby, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush
Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything
Bill Bryson, Shakespeare
Claire Tomalin, Charles Dickens
Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution
Hilaire Belloc, The Path To Rome
Geoffrey Whillans and Ronald Searle, Molesworth
Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts
Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time to Keep Silence

Hmm. It seems my fun reading includes a lot of travel books.

In reply to Tim Chappell:

Aaaaargh! Instead of the pedantry you could, you know, just get behind the spirit of the thread, as everyone else seems to have managed to do...

But thank you for the contribution.

In reply to Tall Clare:

I wasn't trying to be pedantic. I was trying to understand the question. E.g. if "should" means "you don't understand the modern world unless you've read them", then a very different list is called for.

In reply to Tim Chappell:

Okay, what would you put on *that* list, out of interest?

In reply to Tim Chappell:

I think you were just trying....

In reply to Tall Clare:


Oooh, I dunno. They probably wouldn't be books that *everyone* should read-- a primary-school child might struggle with them-- hence my other head-scratching.

Maybe:

Bible
Dante, Divine Comedy
Shakespeare
Locke Treatise of Civil Govt.
Rousseau, Social Contract
Wordsworth, Prelude
Mill, On Liberty
Darwin, Origin of Species
Tolstoy, War and Peace
Nietzsche Genealogy of Morals

... that only gets us to the 1890s, I can't really keep it down to ten

In reply to Tim Chappell:

Aargh, I left Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Marx out. Not to mention all the others. Impossible...

In reply to Little Brew: I've just bought Jane Eyre. It seems to be popular in Russia - my Russian friends mention it and I'm fed up admitting that I haven't read it!

In reply to Tim Chappell:

If you read the OP, it says that you're allowed 50, as per the list that inspired this thread. That might help.

In reply to Tall Clare:

I love many of the early / mid 20th century American classics, so will start with them, dozens of must read, but I will just start with 3.

To kill a mocking bird
Catcher in the Rye
The Great Gatsby

Predictable, but for good reason. More later.

In reply to Tall Clare:

Sorry to be pedantic, but it says that regardless of whether Tim Chappell reads it.

In reply to The New NickB:

I'm just about done with Catcher in the Rye... Damn, it's terrible. Nearly as bad as Crime and Punishment. It's well written, but it's a fairly poor narrative. I think a great novel should be narrative driven. Raving about "well written" books is like complimenting the special effects in a movie

...maybe i've massively missed something.

I'd add.

>Lord of the rings (was important to me reading in young adolescence)
>Straw dogs (best modern philosophy book?)
>Book of 5 rings (Best ancient philosophy book?)
>Anthology of Orwell's essays (is this allowed on this list?) I think Orwell's true genius is best shown in his essays...He'd have to be on the list but I dont think 1984 goes far enough.
>Anthology of Chekhov's short stories...because he's the master!

In reply to Tall Clare: As it can be up to 50 I offer the following as they are advised by the national curriculum;

Pupils 7 to 11:

The Eighteenth Emergency by Betsy Byars;
Tom Fobble's Day (Alan Garner);
The Ghost of Thomas Kempe (Penelope Lively);
Tom's Midnight Garden (Philippa Pearce);
Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf (Catherine Storr);
On the Way Home (Jill Murphy);
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (Joan Aiken);
Warrior Scarlett (Rosemary Sutcliffe);
The Hobbit (J R R Tolkien);
Jabberwocky (Lewis Carroll);
The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler (Gene Kempe);
The Christmas Card (Paul Theroux);
The Jolly Postman (Janet and Allan Ahlberg);
The Once and Future King (T H White);
The Village by the Sea (Anita Desai);
Tales from the Mabinogion (Kevin Crossley-Holland);
How the Whale Became (Ted Hughes);
The Stone Book (Alan Garner); All Hushed and Still within the House (Emily Bronte);
John Brown, Rose and the Midnight Cat (Jenny Wagner);
Captain Najork and His Hired Sportsmen (Russell Hoban).

In reply to grumpybearpantsclimbinggoat:

What did you think of those?

In reply to Tall Clare:

As they are vetted by the curriculum board then I think they are a good choice of books that everyone should read.

In reply to grumpybearpantsclimbinggoat:

Thanks for that--there are some children's books (if that's the right term) that I've never stopped reading, and your list includes three of them:


It also includes two I'd forgotten about, but enjoyed when I was at school, and really should have another look for...

The Ghost of Thomas Kempe (Penelope Lively);

In reply to Tall Clare:

I think everyone should read a book that tantalises their imagination. To that end, I think it important to read "out of genre". For example, I never read either children's books or science fiction. I thoroughly enjoyed reading around in those genres.

I think YOU should read Harry Potter (as previously discussed).

In reply to grumpybearpantsclimbinggoat:

Could you offer a personal recommendation from the list?

In reply to Ava Adore:

Definitely! You haven't?? That's shocking. You'll never get a proper idea of Harry Potter from the films, because the films are pants.

In reply to Tim Chappell:

Is a proper idea of Harry Potter something that one SHOULD have in the first place anyhow?

He is Adrian Mole with a wand.

In reply to Ava Adore:

Mr TC's son has just worked his way through most of them. Mr TC's daughter didn't enjoy them.

I'm still not tempted - too many other things I want to read first!

In reply to Tall Clare:


They're very good-- very funny, very easy to read, lots of sharp observation, some excellent running gags.

But who knows, you might not like them, which is why I wonder about "*should* read"-- there aren't many things that appeal to all tastes, and the things that do appeal to all tastes are often a bit vanilla.

In reply to Tall Clare:

This isn't specified in the OP.

In reply to Tim Chappell:

Did you read the thread that sparked this one? There was a lot of debate on there about 'should' - and so this one is just essentially about personal recommendations, as that one was.

I do think you're overthinking this just a teensy eensy bit.

In reply to grumpybearpantsclimbinggoat:

I did use the word 'you', rather than 'I'd like you to point me at what a committee has selected as recommended reading' because if I did that then we'd be straight back at the quibbles in the 'fifty books...' thread about which list is worthier. This is about *your* recommendations, though if you only ever go by other people's lists then I could see how it could be a challenge.

In reply to Tall Clare:


No, I didn't read the other thread. I am very keen on the polymorphousness of the world and hence a teensy eensy bit suspicious of top-ten lists... nonetheless, you have two from me

In reply to Tim Chappell:

That's kind of the whole point of this - and, as it ended up, the previous thread.

Hey ho.

In reply to Tim Chappell:

And if you have little time for these things, why bother to contribute? There are plenty of other threads to choose from.

In reply to Tall Clare:

I was interested to know what you had in mind, that was all, and thought I'd offer some suggestions once I knew. Just trying to be helpful and friendly and stuff.

In reply to Kemics:

I think you are missing something, but I know it is a book that divides people.

I think lists like these should have a few children's books, my personal nominations would be Dahl's Matilda and Neil Gaiman's Coraline. The later recommended to me by a ten year old quite recently.

In reply to Tall Clare:

You say "just come up with the top ten books you think everyone should read."

I've been a good chap and listed more than 10.

You say "If you can provide reasons, so much the better".

What better reason than the national curriculum list for 7 to 11 year olds?

If said students do not read them then they could potentially fail their exams ergo it fulfils the OP thread title "books you think everyone should read".

Cannot see anything specific in the original OP asking for personal recommendations but the book list does logically satisfy the OP requirements.

In reply to Tall Clare: Clare, no it's not just you...

In reply to grumpybearpantsclimbinggoat:

Moving on...

In reply to Submit to Gravity:

Thank you!

In reply to Tall Clare: I think that we should have a rule that if you contribute to these threads you should take one of someone else's list as a recommendation and read it.

I think The Secret History might be making a future Top Ten list for me btw...

In reply to Submit to Gravity:


Not a bad idea--the stimulus to relocate Thomas Kempe and Willoughby Chase is certainly welcome to me

In reply to Tall Clare:

Just to put a dampener on things. Reading a book is simple, undertanding it, is another matter !

In reply to Blue Straggler:

This stems from an e-conversation TC and I had a long time ago now where TC said something like they weren't her kind of thing and I was encouraging her to read them to find out whether they were. I remind her of this from time to time just to be annoying.

In reply to Tall Clare:
All personal favoourites - can't think of any better reason to reccomend them...
In no particular order (and some of these 'books' contain more than one book )


LOTR - tolkein
Saga of the exiles - Julian May
first chronicles of thomas covenant - Stephen Donaldson (leave it at the first)
The Lensman series - EE Doc Smith
The Electric kool aid acid test - Tom Wolfe
On the road - kerouak
The wind in my wheels - Josie Dew
Tuning B.L's A series engine - David Vizard
The family from one end street - eve garnett
To Kill a mockingbird - Harper lee - should be top of the list
the adventures of Tom Sawyer & the adventures of Huckleberry finn - Twain
Contact - Carl Sagan.

That's 11 - really hard to stop when you're on a roll eh?

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Does that mean that Lord Voldemort is Margaret Thatcher?

In reply to The New NickB:

Speak not the name!

In reply to Tim Chappell:
The V name or the T name?

In reply to Tim Chappell:

Ok

Does that mean that Lord Voldemort is M*****t T******r?

In reply to The New NickB:


I set 'em up, you knock 'em in

In reply to Tall Clare: I must say I've noticed that all of these 'x books you should read' lists seem to be fairly heavily biased towards books that are literary masterpieces. I don't read very much, but when I do it tends to be to learn something about, or to gain deeper insight into a particular subject. I guess I probably wouldn't notice brilliant writing if hit me on the head so perhaps I'm not missing much by not reading the 'classics'!

I don't think I'd ever say that somebody 'should' read a particular book, because you should only really read what you want to, but the top 5 books which I would recommend to somebody considering reading them would probably be, in no particular order:

*Richard Dawkins - The God Delusion - makes you consider not only religion, but also the origins of life in a very objective way
*Steve Tomasula - Vas - An Opera In Flatland - a bit off piste but an interesting way to explore the possibilities of the genome
*David Millar - Racing Through The Dark - an honest and articulate insight into perhaps the most 'notorious' sport in the world
*Ben Goldacre - Bad Science - exposes the utter crap that we are subjected to every day in the name of 'science', and in an incredibly simple way.
*Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness - for no other reason than I thought it was quite an enjoyable read

In reply to Aly:


It baffles me why this has gained the reputation it has. I found it to be trite, narcissistic and poorly written.

Disclaimer - I have some varied taste.

Neil Gaiman - American Gods; superb story telling, amazing imagery and an excellent social commentary to boot.

Joseph Heller - Catch 22 - no justification required

George Orwell - 1984 - could be called 2013?

Nelson Mandela - Long Walk to Freedom - staggering.

Heinrich Herrer - The White Spider - god those were real men in them days

Heinrich Harrer - Seven Years in Tibet - almost unfair the adventures this bloke had

Cormac McCarthy - The Road - bleak but compelling

Hunter S Thompson - Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas - visceral, visual, amazing

Thomas Keneally - Schindler's Ark - incredible

Peter F Hamilton - Fallen Dragon - scifi at its finest

In reply to jolivague:

I think if I had to recommend a climbing book it would be Feeding the Rat by Al Alvarez.

In reply to Tall Clare:

guy sajer - forgotten soldier; (not for everyone)1942ish russian front

terry pratchett - hogfather; to be read just before christmas

julus caesar - comentaries; 2000 year old political spinning

iain m banks - use of weapons

iain m banks - player of games

iain m banks - consider phlebas

iain m banks - feerum endjin

iain m banks - surface detail (all unpredictable)

patrick o'brian - master and commander series (better than the film)

tom holland - persian fire

jrrt - lotr

herodotus - histories

In reply to The New NickB: One book that I haven't seen mentioned here but I think is absolutely remarkable, even life changing if Life and Fate by Vassily Grossman. Mind-blowing stuff and brilliantly written too!

In reply to tomrainbow:

I am currently reading Il Paradiso, by Dante. It's fantastic.

I am also reading A Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James. I'm really not sure I can be bothered.

In reply to Tall Clare:
None at all, there's no need to read what what other people say you should read.

Apart from Dan Brown of course.

In reply to elsewhere:


Dan Brown is staggeringly bad. Obviously his story lines are utterly stupid, everybody knows that. But he also writes the worst prose I've come across anywhere. His style is just horrible. Hardened journalists find it uncontrollably emetic. I tried reading The Da Vinci Code and he finished me off in about 5 paragraphs.

In reply to jolivague:


Was he pissed.......................................?


Personally I can't believe that no one's suggested Jeffrey Archer..........

In reply to Tall Clare:
I would put Moby Dick close to the bottom of any list of books worth reading, assuming time to be worth money. These days I read mostly popular science with an evolutionary theory slant, though I used to read a ton of novels and climbing narratives. My list is...

A Reason for Everything - Marek Kohn
The Ancestor's Tale - R Dawkins
God is not Great - C Hitchens
The Rational Optimist - Matt Ridley
Catch-22 - J Heller

In reply to Tim Chappell:

Which version are you reading? I now have about five different translations. IHMO, the Musa is the best. Surely one of the most beautiful tercets is that in Paradiso XXX, 40–42:

luce intellettüal, piena d' amore;
amor de vero ben, pien di letizia;
letizia che trascende ogni dolzore.

i.e:

light intellectual, full of love,
love of the true good, full of wonder,
wonder that transcends all (mere) sentiment. [My trans.]

In reply to bullybones:

I've never got this Joseph Heller thing. I just don't find him funny, I have to say. It's all sour New York wisecracking. And very contrived.

The funniest books I've ever read are Bill Bryson's Appalachian Trail book, Money by Martin Amis, and Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

I use the John Sinclair parallel text. I try and read the Italian; if I get stuck I slide across to the English.

In reply to Tim Chappell:

Yes, Sinclair is brilliant, because of he has all the Italian text with a very trustworthy straight translation alongside.

In reply to Tim Chappell:

If you found Bill Bryson's Appalachian Trail book funny, it implies that you haven't read his earlier much funnier books on Europe and the UK: Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe (1991) and
Notes from a Small Island (1995). Neither Here nor There is arguably the funniest travel book ever written.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

No, I have read those. I just found the AT book funnier. Diff'rent strokes and all that.

In reply to Tall Clare:

The Dispossessed - ursula k le guin
Dandelion Wine - Ray Bradbury
The Bridge - Iain Banks
one day in the life of Ivan denisovitch - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
kafka on the shore - haruki murakanmi
The worse journey in the world - apsley cherry gerrard
The Lord of the Rings - JRRT
Mr standfast - John Buchan
Mr Midshipman Easy - Captain marryat
The little Grey Men - BB

should be enough for a few weeks by the fire....

In reply to Tall Clare: Am I allowed just to throw in an alternative to Janie Jones' Dawkins book? The Magic of Reality. And a sort of scifi,A Secret History by Mary Gentle, an alternative view of European history. I will have a think about a full list. And will certainly check out books I don't know.

In reply to mockerkin:

There is another novel called The Gentle Ones which has been mentioned on this site before by me and another but I can't find reference to it anywhere. It was about terrible people in WW2. Should be read, but is disturbing. Perhaps one of our Jewish readers could find it.
I could recommend others but many of my books are not easy to find now.

It is called "the Kindly Ones" By Jonathan Littell. A powerful but strange book.

In reply to altirando:


Nope. No alternatives to Dawkins permitted. This is UKC you know.

In reply to Tall Clare:

Would like to give a bump to the aforementioned Catch 22, To Kill a Mockingbird, Moby Dick, Heart of Darkness, LOTR & Cider With Rosie.

I'll add:

Beside the Ocean of Time - George Mackay Brown (just because it's the best fantasy I've read)

Waterlog - Roger Deakin (for the wonderful and non-judgemental way that he sees the natural world and those that make use of it)

The Blind Watchmaker - Richard Dawkins (a thoroughly understandable description of the mechanisms of evolution by natural selection, and possibly a bit less reactionary than his other books)

Brighton Rock - Graham Greene (Or any Graham Greene really for his brilliant visceral portrayal of villainy and love and humanity generally, red in tooth and claw)

Jeeves & Wooster - PG Wodehouse (any and all, what ho!)

Nightfall - Isaac Asimov (just shows what good sci-fi can do and all within about 100 pages)

Ring of Bright Water - Gavin Maxwell (or any of his other highland adventures, because I love the West Highlands unashamedly)

Treasure Island - RLS (all the reasons have been said before)

Last Chance to See - Douglas Adams & Mark Carwardine (Adams' at his best)

Deep Play - Paul Pritchard (still the best climbing book/autobiography out there)

In reply to Tall Clare:

In view of the other threads recently I'd nominate:

How to shit in the woods - Kathleen Meyer

and

The Highway Code - HMSO

In reply to bullybones: A lot of people suggesting Catch 22. I really wanted to enjoy it, but I was missing something because if there was any humour it went straight over my head. I gave up after 100 pages .

In reply to Bjartur í Sumarhús:

I gave up after about 100 pages on my first go, now it's one of my favourites. I think the humour is drawn largely from the increasingly ridiculous relationships between different characters and those characters and the USAF/base/enemy as the book develops, culminating in a MILD SPOILER unexpectedly life affirming ending. Worth another shot imho.

In reply to Bjartur í Sumarhús:

Same here it whooshed me too - complete tosh!

E

In reply to Enty:

It didn't help that I tried Catch-22 having already tried Picture This, which I thought was just awful--sarcastic and cynical without being funny, clever-clever without being clever, and towards the end it degenerated into Heller just copying out large stretches of a precis of Thucydides' Histories and rehearsing the same gags he'd already made in Catch-22.

In any case the central gag in Catch-22 is so clumsily stated by Heller that in his formulation it doesn't actually work as a logical paradox.

In reply to Tim Chappell:

Love it!!

E

In reply to Tom Last:

Is reactionary really the best word to describe Dawkins' work?

In reply to The New NickB:

No, of course not.

In reply to Tom Last:

I just wondered why you used it.

In reply to The New NickB:

Fair dues. I've not read The God Delusion, but have read The Blind Watchmaker And The Selfish Gene.

People have given me the (correct/incorrect?) impression that TGD seemed a reaction against a perceived rise, or perhaps just continuation of religious belief in the secular west. I should probably have said "a bit less reactionary than his other books possibly are" but isn't that a split infinitive?
I made the point as as I understand it, this perception of TGD is why some people are put off of reading Dawkins in general. IIRC, Dawkins makes the point at the beginning of TBW that he wanted to write an easily understandable book on the subject of evolution in the face of general misunderstanding, incredulity and mis-representation by religious establishment, ie reactionary. Doesn't mean the book's any less valid and certainly doesn't suffer for it.

In reply to Tall Clare: Anyway, my top read can be found by googling my username.

In reply to graeme jackson:

I really loved the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (once I'd waded through the first 100 pages or so, which were pretty unremarkable), but i didn't find the second chronicles particularly objectionable. I'd say they were worth reading to anyone who enjoyed the first.

Ever read Donaldson's Gap series? When I read them aged 17 or so I thought they were the best thing I'd ever read (and they left a strong enough impression that I'd still put them on a list of my 10 favourite books), but I've no idea if that was just youthful exuberance or if they really are genuinely great. I should probably re-read them to find out, but I never normally re-read books, since I usually remember what's going to happen about half way through them and lost interest...

In reply to Tall Clare:

Anyway, my list would be something like:

USA - John dos Passos
The Gap Cycle - Stephen Donaldson
The Crow Road - Iain Banks
On The Road - Jack Kerouac
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
In Cold Blood - Truman Capote
the Latin American trilogy with daft names - Louis de Bernieres
The Man In The High Castle - Phillip K. Dick
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams

In reply to Tall Clare:

No mention of Steinbeck?

Of Mice and Men.?

remember it from my schooldays

In reply to andymac:

It's your list - you can have what you like.

In reply to Tall Clare:

my list would be very short.

I have never lifted a work of fiction,of my own volition,and read it from cover to cover, in my puff.

even with non fiction ,I open my latest distraction at any given page,and sometimes start reading the pages back the way.

I am aware that I am somewhat odd.but theres nae harm in it.

In reply to victim of mathematics:

For epic sweep I preferred 'Sometimes a Great Notion' despite the cheesy ending. It almost made it onto my list though it's some time since I read it.

In reply to tomrainbow:
Ditto!

In reply to Tim Chappell:
You mean...'A short Walk in the Woods'
Very funny!

In reply to Tom Last:

I think it's a good idea that everyone should read a Dawkins to understand what life is and what it is not. And watch a load of David Attenborough documentaries on the telly.

While the God Delusion is very clear, I don't think it has much purpose: anyone reading it who doesn't agree will switch off, and what's the point of reading it if you already know that God doesn't exist? The Blind Watchmaker and The Selfish Gene are far more important and brilliant.

In reply to Removed User:

Nineteen Eighty Four - for an insight into what has happened because we were not careful

In reply to Fredt:

Quick! Get your tin foil hat back on!

In reply to Tall Clare: I thought 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' was a masterpiece in terms of the skill of writing it.

In reply to victim of mathematics:

have you read the third chronicles (still a book to come)? Seems to be a lot of padding.

read them last year for the first time. Not what I was expecting at all - very dark. He seems to have a penchant for portraying women in subservient roles as in GAP and also the Mordants need books

In reply to Tim Chappell:

Give him a break - it's originally stated by Doc Daneeka if I remember correctly, who is losing his grip on sanity.

I've read the book over a dozen times over a 30-year period, and I get something new out of it every time, as well as routine pure enjoyment. I can't say that about any other book.

One of the problems first-time readers have is keeping track of the dozens of characters. Stick with it folks.

In reply to Tom Last:

Simple solution: to get your hit of anti-theism read Christopher Hitchens' book God is not Great. For good science, read just about any Dawkins: my personal favourite is The Ancestors Tale as it's all-encompassing.

In reply to graeme jackson:

I had no idea they existed until yesterday. I have to say that they haven't immediately leapt to the top of my to-read list. But perhaps if it wasn't 10 years since I read the 2nd chronicles I might feel differently.

In reply to Tall Clare: Inevitable repetition here and all 'should' be read because I enjoyed them so much and would like others to as well:

1) Catch-22 (but consistently divides readers - clear again from this thread)

2) The Collector - John Fowles (regularly recommended to those who don't really read fiction so they can experience a book that is 'unputdownable').

3) The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway (The Garden of Eden comes recommended though, if tortured relationships are your thing).

4) A Walk in the Woods - Bill Bryson (mentioned previously, but was recommended this after an early hatred of Bryson. This turned me around, giving some genuine laughs at him and Katz(?)).

5)The Mayor of Casterbridge - Thomas Hardy (hated it at school but just become more and more enjoyable - however, I still have a snigger in the scene when Elizabeth Jane loses her 'muff' and they search for it).

6) Treasure Island - RL Stevenson (great story and characters - the best?)

7) The Liar - Stephen Fry (No classic, but I'm reading for the nth time - very enjoyable)

8) Waterlog - Roger Deakin (amazing man - the wood one was good, but this had so much passion from him)

9) The Story of Lucy Gault - William Trevor (utterly tragic)

10) South Devon and Dartmoor: A Climbers' Guide - Nick White (If I'm honest, this is the book which just keeps on giving)

Highly recommended:

Deep Water Rockfax – my first climbs

Don't Sleep, There are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle -
Daniel Everett (The linguistics can be a bit of a grind, but the hearing about how this missionary became an atheist and his life in the Amazon was fascinating)

The Count of Monte Christo – Dumas (Drags on a bit too much to make top ten)

Crime and Punishment – Dostoyevsky

Erik the Viking - lovely memory

Don't Sleep, There are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle - Daniel Everett (The linguistics can be a bit of a grind, but the hearing about how this missionary became an atheist and his life in the Amazon was fascinating)

Engleby - great voice (maybe my favourite fictional psychopath)

Must stop - this is very enjoyable but I'll stick ten(nish)

In reply to Tall Clare:

Soldiers of Salamis, Javier Cercas, ordinairy people make a difference, outstanding

Life and Fate, Valery Grossman, in a world gone mad (Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War) personal decency and integrity keeps you sane

Great list of books so far

In reply to Tall Clare: After recent experiences, the book that everyone should read....'The Highway Code'!

In reply to Tall Clare:

just starting ;

Living with a Large Penis ,by Dr Richard Jacob

Hope it has the odd decent tip. and a happy ending

In reply to andymac: There were some 'must haves' when I was younger that seem to have completely gone off the radar now, for example
'Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee' by Dee Brown, perhaps because it was made into a not great film.
And, 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' which I hated. A book that was top of the list when I was first in the Alps was 'The Magus' by John Fowles, it was passed from tent to tent on the Biolay. Sadly Fowles re-wrote it and the new version just doesn't do it for me.

In reply to Al Evans:
The book thief
The ragged trousered philanthropists
The great days (Bonatti !)
A classic slum
The road to Wigan pier
The old man and the sea
Terese raquin
Menlove
Scrambles among the Alps
Always a little further

All the above in no particular order

In reply to Tall Clare: The Devil#s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce. Although reading the whole thing may cause death by cynicism.

In reply to Tall Clare: Fremder.

In reply to Tim Chappell:

That's weird coz I read half of it before giving up. At no point did I feel like coming.

In reply to Tim Chappell: I re-read this thread. Jeez, more than ever you sound like a pretentious self-important tw*t.

In reply to Tall Clare:

Itd be interesting if everyone read the quran.

The thoughts of mao, naked ape, soul of a man under socialism, autobiography of asata shakur, great white shark hunt, bridge on the drina and ulysses would be good in schools too.

In reply to Tall Clare: Part 1

If we had a "should read" list this would cover stuff that people might read once but would probably never read again (or maybe even never complete from cover to cover - the literary equivalent of, say, ticking Desperation Crack at Brimham or Freddie's Finale at Wimberry). So the list might include worthy, allegedly essential, stuff such as Feynman's Lectures in Physics, Joyce's Ulysses, Gravitation by Misner, Thorne & Wheeler, The Brothers Karamazov, The Magic Mountain, etc.

But my list is books which I recommend because I've read each of them several times and get more from them each time I re-read - like a climb that's so good you have to do each time you walk past, say, Herford's Crack in Ogwen.

1. Uncle Fred in the Springtime by P G Wodehouse
[or any one several others in the Blandings / Jeeves & Wooster series]

2. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
[great yarn about code-breaking, a hunt for Nazi gold, WWII special operations - the only novel I know that finds an excuse to quote the Riemann zeta function in Chapter 1]

3. The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
[ideas, as usual in Dick, about what's the difference between real and fake; also a book about an alternate world in which an author writes a book about an alternate world...]

4. Treasure Island by R. L. Stevenson
[simply a great story; the most frightening character in the book is a blind man - how strange is that?]

5. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
[an acquired taste, I know, and Heller's other books are hard-going, but essential]

6. The Bridge by Iain Banks
[I've resisted the temptation to include several others by Banks; this one is complicated and needs to be read more than once: dreams within dreams within dreams? - I still don't uderstand why Mr Johnson is outside washing windows. Highlight: a swordsman laying waste to the world of mythology in Glaswegian dialect.]

7. Excession by Iain M. Banks
[oops, another one by Banks; mind-boggling, as usual in his Culture novels, and complicated - sort of a space opera version of le Carré's 'Tinker, Tailor' - Who is the mole?]

In reply to Tall Clare: Part 2

(Books that I've read several times)

8. Greenmantle by John Buchan
[trashy but compelling]

9. The Honourable Schoolboy by John le Carré
[the middle of the Smiley trilogy, the one that has not been made into a film, as far as I know; unforgettable and sometimes disturbing evocations of recent Asian history]

10. Rock Jocks, Wall Rats and Hang Dogs by John Long
[great stories told in great style, sometimes with an unexpected biblical turn of language, though the linking material written for non-climbing readers is a bit clunky]

11. Macbeth by William Shakepeare
[this one must have been easy to write - all he did was open up a book of quotations]

In reply to Rob Davies:

The magic of these lists is that they can be full of whatever you want. It was just an idea about getting away from the lists we're presented with, and making up some of our own.

I still haven't put one of my own up - must rectify that.

In reply to Tall Clare: although I have already put a list up here is a few more books I believe are must reads.
Luke Rhinehart, the dice man, an earlier American psycho book.
Bret Easton Ellis, american psycho, I love the details in this book, obsessional .
Ian Banks, Complicity, juicy deaths
Ian Banks, wasp factory, the brother is so funny, and what is in that jar?
Ian Banks , walking on glass,
Pullman, amber spy glass and the other two has to count as one book
Robert Heinlein, time enough for love. Another brilliant story to rival stranger in a strange land
Brian Bates, the way of wyrd, interesting study of ancient England

In reply to Tall Clare:
After a bit of thought...

Carson McCullers - The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Tillie Olsen - Tell Me A Riddle
James Kelman - An Old Pub Near The Angel
Stanislav Lem - Solaris
Lord Dunsany - The King Of Elfland's Daughter
Alasdair Gray - Lanark
Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse 5
Junot Diaz - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Laurence Steele - Tristam Shandy
Flann O'Brien - The Third Policeman

This isn't my top 10 favourite books, I've deliberately avoided stuff that I love that everyone knows they should read anyway, or that I know is a bit of an acquired taste. It's quite a diverse list but mostly fairly approachable in one way or another.

In reply to Tall Clare:


never mind 10 books - read The koran..

Better read it now before the PC brigade makes it compulsory..


( I'll get me coat )

In reply to Tall Clare:

Some personal favourites, not a top ten

George F. Kennan -- Memoirs
Samuel Morison -- The European Discovery of America
Allen Dulles -- The Secret Surrender
Italo Calvino -- Marcovaldo
Viscount Alanbrooke -- War Diaries
Alan Moorehead -- The White Nile (or any of the Desert War volumes)
Harold Nicolson -- Diaries and Letters
Rebecca West -- Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
W. Averell Harriman -- Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin
Adrian Tinniswood -- His Invention So Fertile

PS I've received Soft City after your recommendation and will let you know on a similar future bookish thread how I found it.

In reply to Tall Clare:
Oliver Twist. Dickens
Two Years Before The Mast. Dana
Brideshead Revisited. Waugh
An Ice Cream War. Boyd
Huckleberry Finn. Twain
The Tin Lizzie Troop. Swarthout
Mr Pye. Peake
The Riddle Of The Sands. Childers
The Call Of The Wild. London
The Darling Buds of May. Bates

In reply to gd303uk:

When The Dice Man came out we interviewed Rhinehart on , I think, This Morning. He claimed the book was semi autobiographical, even the rape scene!

In reply to ice.solo:

I haven't read the Koran, I think I tried once and gave up, it's worse than The Bible which I have read several times. I have however also read the Book of Mormon, including the forward with the history of it. Weird Shit these religious types believe.

In reply to Tall Clare:

- 'Many Lives, Many Masters'
- 'Europe 101 - History and Art for the Traveler'
- 'Liar's Poker'
- 'To Kill a Mockingbird'
- 'I Ching'
- 'Out of Iran'
- 'Prisoners - a Muslin & a Jew Across the Middle East Divide'
- 'The Call of the Wild'
- 'Six Easy Pieces'
- 'Conquest of Happiness'

Should have no problem finding them in Amazon.

In reply to Tall Clare: I'm surprised that Proust hasn't figured more - Á La Recherche... widely critically accepted as the "greatest novel of the 20th C" etc. Is it that people no longer read it? Or has what Proust has to say lost some currency? For sure it's a long journey and bits can be a struggle but in the end it's immensely rewarding and hard to argue with the plaudits it's always attracted.

Somebody who puts it better than I can:

http://promethee.philo.ulg.ac.be/engdep1/download/proust/Proust%20regained%...

In reply to janiejonesworld:

I suspect he's just fallen out of fashion. He'll be back!

In reply to Tall Clare: The Secret History was superb. I really enjoyed it. I never re-read books but I might wait a year and read it again. I found her writing to be very comfortable to read, maybe almost clinical, but it suited me. I think she does a good job of making deep, complex thoughts and emotions accessible. Someone up-thread said that the characters were hard to empathise with, and it's true, but I think the book stands on its merits despite it; it's not really the point, its deeper and more thought-provoking than that.

In reply to janiejonesworld:

In Search of Lost Time is my favourite book. I cannot imagine ever reading a book (or interacting with a cultural work in any media for that matter) that more deeply affects me. But, it's such a singular, brilliant yet deeply flawed work, and the investment of time and mental energy required is so huge, that I would hesitate to recommend it as a book "everyone should read". More suitable recommendations would have more general appeal and less "opportunity cost".

In reply to thebigfriendlymoose: It's perhaps not my favourite but certainly in the top 5 and was a really rewarding labour of love. I guess my point was that there was a time, not so long ago I think, when most lovers of literature would have seen it as essential to make time to read ISOLT at some point in their lives such was its perceived value, and if the remit had been "10 works of literature...." it would have featured high on all such people's lists. I'm wondering why that has changed - it doesn't seem that very long and multi-volume books have gone out of fashion in general as far as I can tell and the great 19th C authors French seem as popular as ever.
Anyway, if I live long enough I cherish a thought of brushing up my French and returning to Proust but in the original in my retirement

In reply to Tall Clare:

3 men in a boat, some Jerome bloke
Hitchhikers GTTG
Cloud atlas
Boomeritis
All of Philip k Dick
Far from the mading crowd
Thinking Fast and slow
Gormenghast

In reply to nakedave:
mountain days and bothy nights

In reply to Tall Clare:

Anything by Jordan (AKA Katie Price)

I'll get me coat(again)

And a puke bag

In reply to Tall Clare: Song of ice and fire , the books that game of thrones is based.

Its like war of the roses in the middle ages with lots of magic, sex and fighting and characters so venemous they would eat the Borgias for breakfast,
All the books in the series = 7 so the next 3 would be

World war Z ( the book is better then the current flim)
Into the Silence by wade davis , great book on Mallory and early Everest expeds

The Climb by antoli boukrev is a great book to read, much better then into thin air